Seemab Kazmi
Professor Tallon
IS251
Blog 3
The Spotify Effect:
How The Company Has Used Big Data To Revolutionize Music
Spotify is
known in pop culture for its seamless ability to know its user. It creates
playlists, gives suggestions, and markets to the user exactly to each user’s
unique taste. While Apple Music, Youtube, and other music streaming apps also
have a wide selection of music and create an easy-to-use interface for its
users, Spotify gets to know its user. Spotify has used big data to personally
learn about its users and their preferences. Examples of this include their Discover Weekly, Daily Mix, and Release Radar
playlists. Each list looks at the users preferences, allowing them to thumbs up
and down to rebuild the algorithm to better align with their preferences.
Spotify tracks its users every move, down to every song you save. Using the
data they collect, they suggest songs that align with your preferences or are
by artists you like. This is great for a user—we can find music we like much
easier. But, the data collected is not just seen by Spotify’s algorithm as it
suggests us new music. The music industry is utilizing this data to improve
their music, marketing skills, and give artists a longer shelf life.
Spotify’s
data is not just used to better the user’s experience. This data also
represents the artists being listened to and their popularity. The number of
streams an artist has determines their success on the charts. This is rapidly
changing the music industry, as individual record sales matter less and less.
It also means that artists have to look at the numbers now more than ever.
Previously, the album was viewed as a body of work. But, now each song’s
popularity and style has its own list of streams. As a result, artists feel the
pressure of producing songs that please a larger audience by being a
“desirable” sound. Data will make the music industry even more competitive now
and smaller artists have a better chance at being seen. The negative side of
this is that many artists can get away with making a song that depends
completely on probability instead of creating authentic art that is unique to
their tastes and fanbase. Many seasoned artists like Taylor Swift have taken
their music off streaming services for this exact reason as well. With stream
count not being accounted into the popularity, this harms an artist more than
helping them.
Big data
has revolutionized both how fans listen to music and how artists create it.
Although this benefits smaller artists trying to make a name for themselves,
seasoned artists are finding it more difficult to dominate the charts like they
previously did. This also means a lot of music will be released solely for
streams, which can be difficult for loyal fanbases to appreciate and smaller
artists to accommodate to. Many labels are picking up artists solely for their
streams, which demeans the value of talent and the artistic process.
Reference: https://www.northeastern.edu/levelblog/2018/04/27/big-data-shows-big-results-spotify/
1 comment:
Spotify has revolutionized music by using big data to build extremely accurate taste profiles for users. Music streaming provides a trove of choice for the user, and this can be overwhelming. Providing optimized recommendations that align with user tastes creates a sense of intimacy and personal connection with the service, and also reduce the effort required to choose between millions of songs to listen to. As a Spotify user, the experience can be truly described as premium; the rabbit holes that the algorithms curate when songs you have cued finish are nothing short of phenomenal. A majority of the new music I discover outside of artists I traditionally have listened to are a result of algorithmic discovery.
This has introduced me to a plethora of new artists which fit my tastes, and when the algorithm suggests something less ideal, the dislike button provides all important data for future recommendations. Services like Spotify, both in music and other media, are spearheading the pervasion of big data services into our lives. The new generation being raised on these principles of corporations owning every piece of data on what we like and dislike, value and want to buy will likely be complacent; you can’t avoid companies accumulating your data anymore. However, when you take a step back and think about what this means, the reality is skewing towards something George Orwell envisioned in 1984. This time, big brother are the companies like Google, Netflix, Amazon, Spotify and others. Just using these major, trusted names, companies can build a profile about what you search on the internet, what visual and auditory content piques your interest, and exactly what you buy. As the internet becomes more central to our lives, this aggregation will provide a more and more accurate profile of who we all are as individuals.
This reality may be alarming, but it is certainly unavoidable in modern society. But as long as my Spotify recommendations continue to slap, it’s a reality I can live with.
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